1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for propagating firmware updates in a peer-to-peer network environment.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Data centers today often house many computers which are connected in a peer-to-peer network. Often one or more of these computers may have a new version of firmware than one or more other similarly situated computers. One way to update the firmware is to have a systems administrator manually update the firmware of each computer. To manually update the firmware on each computer with each new version release through the use of a systems administrator is burdensome and inefficient.